Lawrence Mann high-fives basketball players as he passes through the gym at Plano Senior High School. A few of the string-bean teenagers pull him in for a hug. Whenever Mann, tall and broad-shouldered, walks around campus, he’s greeted with a familiar, “What’s up, Coach Mann?”

He’s not a traditional Plano ISD coach, but it’s an apt title. The Plano schools’ at-risk specialist has the power to steer children away from unproductive vices and toward basketball, business and other interests.

To Mann, the term “at-risk” is conditional, not terminal. It’s often tied to a single-parent household, poverty or drugs. He overcomes these challenges by helping kids hold themselves to a higher standard.

Growing up, Mann benefited from mentors like himself. Now, the 51-year-old has dedicated his life to serving as many young people as possible, a mission he extends beyond Plano ISD with his Top Achievers Foundation, a program centered on basketball and mentoring. Mann also runs Man-Up, a program where men — judges, coaches, business leaders — talk to students about how they got to their positions and what it means to be a man. He recently launched a similar program for girls called Young Women Incorporated.

“He’s a coach in his own right,” said Jaydon McCullough, Plano Senior High head football coach. “If you’re at-risk, it’s usually because you have a feeling of hopelessness. … He gives kids hope. And he gives them some options.”

As Plano’s at-risk specialist, Mann visits one or two schools a day, talking with kids and reviewing their records. The district gives him a list of students — currently about 130 boys and 50 girls — who need his help based on behavior and academics.

“I think he just has a heart for helping sometimes disadvantaged kids. And we all can be disadvantaged at different times of our lives,” said Dorothy Shaw, who oversaw Mann’s position at Plano ISD from 2007 until her 2011 retirement.

‘Always in trouble’

Prince Ibeh, now 19, started playing basketball with Top Achievers the summer before his freshman year at Naaman Forest High School in Garland. In middle school, Ibeh said, “I was just mad all the time.” He wasn’t interested in sports; he got in fights. “I was always in trouble,” he said.

The worst of it came when Ibeh was 13 or 14. He was suspended for fighting, and the day he finished his in-school punishment, he got in another fight. “They got the police all in there,” he said. If things played out differently, he could have been arrested.

Mann saw that Ibeh had potential and met with his parents. He explained that their son could play college basketball if he joined the Top Achievers summer league and stuck with the training throughout the school year.

“I just kept working out and practicing,” Ibeh said. Suddenly, he had less time to get in trouble. He fell in love with basketball and made friends who expected him to succeed.

“It was just a bunch of fun guys,” he said of his teammates.

Mann would take Ibeh and other teens to church with his family. In the past, Ibeh’s parents would make him go, but it felt like a chore. With Mann, he said, “I was actually paying attention.”

During his sophomore year of high school, Ibeh received his first college basketball scholarship offer from Baylor University. He hadn’t even played a varsity game.

He continued playing for his high school team, practicing with Top Achievers and mentoring his younger teammates. Mann helped him with basketball and kept up with his school work. His parents stressed good grades, Ibeh said, but Mann was more persistent.

“Basketball’s only gonna be there for so long,” Ibeh said, reiterating Mann’s advice that life is bigger than a sport. Without Mann, Ibeh said, “I don’t know if I would be playing sports; I don’t know if I would be in trouble or not.”

But Ibeh now plays center for the University of Texas’ basketball team on a full athletic scholarship.

Temptations

Growing up as one of seven children in inner-city Detroit, Mann had a mix of influences that could have led him on any number of paths. One of his best friends was a drug dealer, another was an athlete.

The dealer would talk about girls and money. He had both in excess.

“There were times I was tempted,” Mann said. He considered making deliveries for a cut of the profits. “Every day, every week, I thought about it,” he said. He’d also seen family and friends sink more deeply into drug culture and end up dead or in jail.

He had other influencers and mentors who steered him away from trouble: the leader of his youth choir, his father, his pastor and others who helped him in business.

Ultimately, Mann was afraid of jail. He resisted the lure of easy money in favor of hard work and sports.

His childhood friend who dealt drugs was killed before his 20th birthday.

“I wanted to get out of the madness,” Mann said. If you go to the park to play basketball in Detroit, he said, “You may not come home.”

Vow to God

Mann left Wayne State University and moved to Dallas with his younger brother, Terence Mann, who played football for Southern Methodist University and later for the Miami Dolphins. Mann took classes at SMU and found sales jobs in health and fitness, insurance and real estate.

He married in 1986 and had the first of three sons the next year. Five years later, his son needed surgery for a heart defect. Mann made a vow to God that if his son survived, he would dedicate his life to kids and health and fitness.

He drew a plan for Top Achievers on a piece of paper and began fundraising to convert an old Kroger on Independence Parkway and Parker Road into a basketball facility. With donations and good will from the community, the facility thrived.

“They learned how to be gentlemen,” said Gwen Baumann, who sent her son to Top Achievers when Mann first started the program. “When [Mann] talked to them, it was just him and them,” she said.

Mann ran Top Achievers out of the former Kroger space for over a decade before he took the job as at-risk specialist with Plano schools in 2006. With the help of his sons and volunteer coaches, he still runs Top Achievers weekend practices and games, but now he rents a court in a Plano strip mall.

“Programs don’t change kids; relationships do,” said Dan Cardinali, president of Communities in Schools, a nationwide nonprofit to help at-risk students graduate. The organization, which serves several Dallas-area districts including Plano ISD, places a site coordinator, with a similar role to Mann, in campuses that have the most need.

“When I mentor, all of these stories flush through my head,” Mann said of his own life. He fears jail for his students as he did for himself. He’s seen athletes fall into drug use and start missing class, “and you know how the script is gonna end,” he said. “I’m teaching them how I came through that chaos.

“A rough day is to see a kid fail,” Mann says. Now and then, a student will end up behind bars or caught up with a dangerous crew. After setbacks, many return for advice.

“He never gave up on a child,” said Johnny Lewis, a recently retired Collin County justice of the peace who handled truancy cases. Mann would often appear in his court alongside families.

But Mann is only one man. The needs of at-risk students extend deep and wide. Some experts believe a stronger academic focus is a necessary fix. Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail, pins his emphasis on elementary education. He’s found that boys who fall behind in reading often fail to catch up.

Whether the holes are academic, familial or otherwise, Mann does his best to patch them.

Lunchtime tune-ups

“How does it feel to know players from Top Achievers when you see them on TV?” Mann asked about 20 eighth-graders during a weekly meeting. Most also play on his Top Achievers team on weekends. If they don’t, they’re friends with the players and familiar with the program.

Not everyone plays college hoops, of course. Far fewer go pro. But, Mann explained to the group, this is all part of networking. Say one of the boys at the table starts a business — guess who will invest? Others in their network who are successful in sports or business or some other career, that’s who.

Mann teaches what he knows, sports and business, and he draws connections between students’ future plans and the way showing up to class on time (or not) and turning homework in on time (or not at all) sets habits.

In that vein, Mann said, “I need you guys to turn in your No Zeros.” It’s a form their teachers must sign to confirm that they’ve turned in all assignments for a month straight.“When teachers get on your case, man, you get them off your case by doing the perfect job,” he said.

The lunchtime conversation — first with eighth-graders, then seventh, then sixth — meandered from Mann’s compliments to one of the basketball players who’s improved significantly to what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has meant for our country.

Mann picked up his iPad and pointed it toward a printout with a two-dimensional outline of a car. An app turned the black-and-white outline into a 3-D-like image of a red race car.

The boys oohed and aahed. Mann asked how they might improve upon this app. The best ideas in innovation, and in life, can come from simple improvements. The group suggested interior views, racing noises, music. Mann suggested linking it with iTunes for a personal touch.

One boy walked out of the room quietly and returned with his own pencil sketch of a Bugatti. The car was impressive enough that several questioned whether he had traced it.

The boy’s drawing, though carefully crafted, wouldn’t work with the highly technical app. But with more work — in science class, in engineering — a student with raw talent and imagination could create an even better app, Mann said.